Bianca is the horseman of conquest. She enjoys riding the bus but not necessarily all the time. Here are a few handy tips on surviving the bus ride to work in the morning.

Avoid the smelly humans. Ok to be fair immortals can smell bad too but humans seem to smell awful more. Peak stick times are late late (after happy hour and last call) or on certain routes past gyms in the early morning. Peak time is rush hour after work. Lots of milling smelly humans.

Don’t eat or drink on the bus. Just a bad idea. Takes one deep pothole or one off balance drunk to send the food or beverage all over you.

Bring flats. Heels and walking between bus stops and destinations do not make for a good morning…or evening.

Make sure you have correct change or your charge card has money on it. Nothing more embarrassing than having the lesser beings stare at your like you’re wasting their time. (You’re welcome for not reducing you to a pile of dust by the way).

Did I say hand sanitizer?

If your friend offers you her car service, don’t be an idiot and too proud to take it. Just take the chauffeured, leather interior, shiny black, beautiful car.

The ability to control people helps clear them out of the way. So have that whenever possible. Humans don’t come standard with that though…so SOL.

Just don’t take the bus. That’s the best tip. Only ride the bus when you have no other option. Might I recommend fairy king’s with magic portals. They are handy for getting around.

You can read more about Bianca in On a White Horse.

​On a White Horse

Blurb:
Victor Brandt has a secret. As a new resident to New York, he goes out in search of diversion, and he finds it behind a red door. The Underworld embraces him, and soon he realizes he's going back night after night just to see Mistress Lethe: a Dominatrix so demanding she will satisfy her submissive into forgetting their own name before stealing her pleasure. But soon Mistress Lethe draws Victor into her world, and he realizes it's a lot larger than he thought.

Bianca's coffee business is booming, but her love life is lacking. With each step her friends—the other three horsemen of the apocalypse—take toward happiness, she holds herself back. As visions of the future threaten everything the horsemen have built, Bianca finds a man who sees all of her: the light and the dark, and for a little while she becomes Mistress Lethe, a simple woman and the embodiment of Conquest. But fate plays cruel jokes, and after only a short time with Victor she is confronted with a decision that can save the world but cost her the first man that’s ever made her want to be human.

When a mysterious stranger arrives bearing ill omens, Bianca wonders if she can keep together her motley crew in order to save the world. Or will the threesome’s tangled emotions usher in the apocalypse? Come and see.

Excerpt:

Bianca berated herself for succumbing to such distraction. Victor, his body, sighs, and all that toned brown skin. Even after her seal was stolen, she still couldn’t get him from her mind. It’s not like they didn’t have an idea of who stole it. It made sense she’d target Bianca since she’d humiliated her when they fought with Hel in the Underworld. The fact that a hellhound had entered her home while she and Katherine were out and stole the crown enraged her. Even Victor’s beautiful body couldn’t heal that sense of violation. When she raced home and found the place empty, at first fear flashed through her for Katherine’s safety, but she called the others and located them all at Scarlet’s place. They partied along completely oblivious through the theft of her seal and where was she? Shame poured over her as her mind drifted back to Victor.

Every inch of her wanted to take Victor again and mark him as her own. His sighs resounded in her mind as she stared at her ceiling during the night. And often, since she’d woken up, she’d stop and think about him. She’d ridden him on the floor, and he’d taken everything she dished out and wanted more. For her first human BDSM relationship, she wadded in neck deep. She researched online about BDSM relationships and learned she’d claim him if he wanted her to. Collar him and then set the standards of whatever came afterward.

For a moment, she considered what kind of collar one would put on a human and if he might actually wear it. Maybe only at the club or in play. Parts of her discounted the notion because she loved nothing impeding her hands from his bare skin. Beautifully unmarred by accessories…but he also cut a nice suit.

She slammed the open book in her lap closed as the bus rattled along between taxis and tourist rigs. No point in pretending anymore. She’d read ten words since she opened it fifteen minutes prior, and three stops remained until she would exit the bus and trek the couple blocks to work. Cloris wanted her, and all of them, to use her car service, but most of them loved the independence and the ability to go about their day and live their own life. Even if they did spend most of their time together. She worried after Katherine though. The woman cared too much about others for her own good, and Bianca feared someone would take advantage of her gentle heart.

A man bumped against her as the bus hit a pothole. He grabbed the pole in front of her that aligned with the seats. All the seats were taken, or she’d have shifted to another one. She glared over at him to find him leering down her cleavage. If she were Scarlet, she’d make him hurt for the insult. Cloris would stare him down and make him regret his daring. If she were Katherine, she’d politely excuse herself to another area of the bus until departure and then forget about it. She glanced back at him as he continued staring, and she didn’t care. None of it mattered because a numb emptiness suffused her. Sitting on a bus full of humans, milling around, living their menial lives. The end of the world might be a favor to them. Give them something to fight for.

Her hands tingled with the power inside her. She shook them to try dissipating the sensation, but it didn’t work. The edge she’d worn off at the club returned with a vengeance. A reminder as that conquering power began to force its way back up again. The man shifted his hand and grazed her breast as he shifted it up the pole in front of the row of seats. Her control snapped and she grabbed his chin. For a moment, the lust in his eyes, and then behind it the disgusted dirty deeds he’d committed in his life, were all she could see. The way he used and abused women before tossing them away.

His voice broke the spell. “You know you want it.”

She leaned in and pressed her lips to his in barely the promise of a kiss, and shoved the raw power inside him. When she pulled away, she smiled and whispered against his mouth. “You will never touch another woman again. Every time you do your skin will itch and burn as if you caught fire.”

He shifted and attempted to break the grip she held on his chin. She wasn’t Cloris, Katherine, or Scarlet, but she was stronger than a human woman. She patted him on the cheek, before releasing him, and he flinched back with a pained expression.
The bus jerked to a halt and she parted the crowd to exit. Once the cool air hit her face, she realized the direction her mind drifted and stopped cold. She’d only seen Victor a couple days prior, and the time she spent with him kept the edge of the need to control at bay, but after two days without the power, it began to rise from the depths of her demanding to be used, demanding the respect. She sighed as a cold sweat sprouted at her temples. She began a heavy march toward the shop and started to wonder if working would be a bad idea. To be around customers and people making demands of her. That might not be a good mix to her already unpredictable powers. She reached into her pocket for her phone and hit one of her worker’s numbers. “Hey, Tina, it’s B. Do you mind taking my shift this afternoon?”

Author Bio:
Monica Corwin is an outspoken writer who attempts to make romance accessible to everyone no matter their preferences. As a new Northern Ohioian Monica enjoys snow drifts, three seasons of weather, and disliking Michigan. When not writing Monica spends time with her daughter and her ever growing collection of tomes about King Arthur.